


The Eye of the Storm

by ACG



Category: Original Work
Genre: Archiving, Other, not fit for public consumption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACG/pseuds/ACG





	The Eye of the Storm

At the start of the summer I turned 17, I dyed my hair bright pink. My parent's paid, some morbid congratulations for not killing myself in the past year. Two months of holidays were ahead of me, an oasis of no responsibility before the HSC. For the first time in months, the future seemed like a possibility. A period of - mostly - happiness, right in the middle of my struggle with depression. I was at once overly confident, and cripplingly self-conscious. It was a summer of wearing boy’s polo shirts, boxer briefs, and grey jeans, wearing a full coverage sports bra and paisley board shorts to the beach. Feeling comfortable in the way I looked, and hating everything else, being unusually active, unusually happy, and excruciatingly empty.

 

By early January, my friend Bree was essentially living with me. We spent our days lazing in hammocks by the pool, surfing the internet, and hiding from the fierce sun. On the rare days she was home, my sister developed a habit of covering herself in baby oil and settling opposite us. Almost every day we headed to the beach. We'd swim out past the sand bank, wrestle against the waves and each other. I'd started to swim again that Christmas. It was cold and rainy, and my cousins dragged us to the beach to go surfing. The miserable weather meant that the beach was almost empty, and I waded into the water for the first time in years. I'd always loved the feeling of fighting the tide, forging out past the crashing waves and into the deep, quiet space, between beach and open ocean. Being in the sea has always seemed like coming home. A fierce force of nature, which will accept you if you fight against the current. My cousin lent me his surf board, and I caught a few clumsy waves, the rough board chafing against my stomach. My family was ecstatic to see me in the water. We all thought it was a sign that I was getting better. Afterwards Bree and I forced our parents to bring us to the beach all the time. We'd never stay for more than two hours, and only in the afternoon. We were both too white for the high noon sun.   
Bree was a born beach baby in strict denial about her sexuality, dating an American girl over the internet while insisting she was straight. I was insecure about everything but my sexuality.

 

Just before I turned 17, a girl named Naomi taught me how to French kiss in my parent's garage. It was the beginning of January and the middle of a sweltering summer, and she was just out of a serious relationship. _Frozen_ was just out and Bree was obsessed. She dragged me out to see it for the fifth time and Naomi tagged along. I slept through most of the movie, with my head in Naomi's lap. Afterwards, she told me that my lips were pretty, and that she'd been looking for someone to fool around with. I volunteered. I was insecure and awkward, and not at all attracted to her, but buckling under the weight of inexperience. Being (almost) 17 and having never been kissed was just one of the things I didn't like about myself. Proof that I was a failure. That I was weird, and doing something wrong. Naomi was charming, intensely charismatic with an ease around people I could never hope to emulate. She worked two jobs, had a car, and was interested in me. We texted non-stop, awkward exchanges which made me nervous. She talked about sex with an ease I was intimidated by, and I felt my 17 birthday as if it were an expiration date. I was desperate for validation she was happy to provide.

 

She kissed me for the first time on a ratty futon in a stuffy garage.  Bree was trying to sleep on the floor next to us. The ancient window unit slowly turned the room freezing. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, her hand was hot on my waist, and I giggled every time she tried to put her tongue in my mouth. Bree got more and more annoyed, yelled at us to 'stop whispering' and eventually we went to sleep. Naomi spent the night pressed up against my back, charmed my parents in the morning, then drove off to go to work. Bree and I went to the beach.

 

The summer was full of highs and lows. Bree had just been 'cured' of epilepsy, and was adjusting to life unmediated. I was deep in the throes of what my doctor called 'major depressive disorder' and my school insisted on calling 'something less drastic'. We were unsure of ourselves, but certain of each other, living out an ideal summer, marred by patches of dysfunction and mental instability. One night, after a fight about something inconsequential, I pulled out some shards of glass I'd hidden away, and dug them into my skin. Bree sat on the bed, blurry-eyed, half-asleep and terrified, with no idea what to do. I read her silence as disgust. Caught in the madness of self-hatred, I felt wronged by her inaction. As if she hadn't cared enough to stop me. Truly, she was sixteen, and way out of her depth. She didn't know what to do any more than I did. We were both trying desperately to figure ourselves out, desperately wanting help, but unable to ask for it. 

 

Later that summer we volunteered at a folk festival. Naomi came with us, and we spent three nights in a tent, barely ten minutes away from home. Bree and I shared a foam mattress and a cotton blanket, and Naomi took the other side of the tent, rugged up in a sleeping bag. On the last night Bree’s parents insisted that she came home. I was too nervous to spend the night alone with Naomi, and decided to go home as well. Right before we left, Naomi said her friend was going to give her weed that night. Wracked again by the fear of missing out, I decided to stay. It was my first time experimenting with drugs or alcohol. I tried some of Naomi's cider, and we sat on a stretch of empty field between the greyhound track and the camping ground. Naomi effortlessly led us into conversation with several strangers, and a man handed her a hand rolled cigarette. Naomi's friends were fire twirlers, and they were putting on an impromptu performance. Eventually, security told us to stop playing with fire and to move further away from the tents, and we headed across the greyhound track and settled down next to the empty stage. It was an intimidating group; two girls around 5 years older than me, who I recognised from high school; Naomi's friends from volunteering; a man dressed as a pirate who called himself pirate Pete; and a group of strangely punk looking men. We curled up on the grass, and smoked and drank as the air grew chillier. Naomi lent me her jacket, and laughed when I realised I was high. Pirate Pete gave me some spiced rum from an on theme flask. I took a drag from a joint that tasted so bad I drank some of a stranger's beer to chase the taste away. I had an in depth conversation about string theory with a man two decade elder than me. At around 4, Naomi went to bed, reclaiming her jacket. I shared a poncho with a guy I barely knew, and talked to strangers about nothing until the dew started to fall, and I wandered back to the tent.

 

The start of school drew near. Bree began to sleep at her own house. One day Naomi was supposed to come spend the night at mine. My parents weren't home. I texted her when she was on her way over and asked her not to come.   
I spent the remaining days of summer in my room. My window looked over the pool, and the empty hammocks. My sister spent the early afternoons slathered in baby oil on the deck, while my mother read beside her. Our dog licked off the baby oil or panted in the shade. The late sunsets faded into hot nights and eventually I went back to school. I asked Naomi not to talk to me anymore because texting stressed me out. Bree and I traded the beach for the darkroom, seeking solace in the smell of chemicals. I dyed my hair brown, and traded jeans and board shorts for school skirts. Things got better - I got better. But not that year.

 


End file.
